The Spirit of the Dingbat

As I like to think, at the end of the day it’s all geology. (Always has been meme)

It’s like they are simultaneously extremely sensitive to gas prices but don’t think they have any control over how much gas they use (vehicle choice, housing location choice, discretionary trips, driving 75 instead of 65 to save 2 minutes)

I truly don’t understand my fellow countrymen on it because they will drive like 40 miles to pick up a $40 Facebook marketplace item but also lose their minds when gas goes up $0.10/gal

"the top 20 percent of Americans by income spent almost three times more on gas in 2020 than the bottom 20 percent"

Sun Tzu (D-NY) - “When your enemy is making a mistake, fix it for him at great cost to yourself.”

It’s ok we all are

Always wild to me that after NH and VT you get to Quebec and it’s… flat. Like Kansas flat. As a kid, I assumed going north meant mountains, further north, bigger mountains.

And train control systems !

Reading the wikipedia article about this disease almost brought me to tears. And at a population level, it's 100% preventable.

Not to suggest that this year sucks or anything, but we're averaging one person killed riding a bicycle in Southern California less than every four days.

This is a huge portion of construction in places like the Antelope Valley and Victor Valley; terrible news for housing there.

Congress' housing bill goes from small supply booster to housing killer The last-minute inclusion of an effective ban on build-to-rent housing threatens to undermine a bipartisan federal housing bill full of pro-supply tweaks.

Republicans want to harm families that rent their homes and Democrats want to harm Americans that rent homes to those families. Today, they found common cause, and unfortunately for you, accomplishing either accomplishes both.

reason.com/2026/03/10/c...

My 7 yo has been very into The Art of War lately, some real bangers in there

leaders like trump are why sun tzu had to write a bunch of advice like "don't write your enemy a letter detailing what tactics you really don't want them to do"

Early 00s but

Awww 🥰

I truly believe that Trump is too stupid to be able to realize that he should try to learn something, too stupid to understand things if he tried, and too stupid to be able to assimilate different facts and probabilities into future possibilities.

They’re very stupid

Again, straight up Confederate eugenics.

American conservatism delenda est.

How did Dallas manage to spend $2b ($75m/mile) on this project? The whole reason sunbelt commuter rail (like Front Runner) used to do so well under Bush Administration criteria is that the capital cost was very low from using existing tracks. PTC premium? But still?

"Where would you dressage?" is hilarious. This isn't even parody in L.A.; I've worked on two SB9 projects in horsekeeping zones: planning.lacity.gov/odocument/b3...

Conan O'Brien in his "the year 2000" sketch

Donald Trump will kill the supreme leader of Iran, and then he will get bored and try to pretend he didn't

No win scenario

All the planning involved some combination of "those assholes fired first" and "The World Has Decided It Is Time To End The Iranian Threat," both involve a level of ally+partner integration that is absolutely not the case here

There was literally no plan for "YOLO Iran war w/Bibi"

Would you even bother trying to explain the Strait of Hormuz to Donald Trump? My 7 yo has a better understanding of forbidden transitions.

This feels like a rational actor error. We have no plan for it because it would be so bad that no one would ever provoke Iran into doing it.

Like any pantheon huckster he is able to deceive people without even having to try. But I don’t think he could put together a plan with like three steps.

I guess I would synthesize by saying: he contains no internal restraints on the dumb shit that he wants, but he contains no internal force of will committed to his worst impulses regardless of what he says

What should Dems do? Nothing. Make republicans propose a gas tax holiday and then when they do insist that they pay for it by cutting spending on something unpopular (like ICE).

As grandfather would have said he’s as dumb as the day is long. A goldfish swimming into the same glass wall over and over.